


put your best foot forward

by fealle



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Adulthood, Aged-Up Character(s), Awkward Conversations, Getting Together, M/M, Parenthood, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6472657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fealle/pseuds/fealle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tmw you want your best friend to consider you as a potential boyfriend but there's an emotional minefield to go through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put your best foot forward

**Author's Note:**

> i originally posted this [here](http://fealle.tumblr.com/post/141678943832/fic-put-your-best-foot-forward-disgusting) with the summary "disgusting bokuroo schmoop" and that summary still stands. i've changed parts of it here and there so hopefully it reads a bit less awkward .... 
> 
> bokuro remains to be a mystery ship to me, i can't seem to grasp it as well as i do with bokutsukki or kurotsukki. oh well.

_The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say …._

 

 

 

 

**i.**

 

The days after the funeral were numerous and painful, as they should be and often are; but now that the present has caught up with him, Kuroo had no way of navigating parenthood by himself when his wife had always been there to console him of a job well-done. Mornings were difficult; he had found himself repeating certain rituals, like the way he’d put out two mugs, when only one will be filled and the other one will remain on the countertop for the day, as if waiting for its owner, until regretfully, Kuroo will put it back onto its proper spot on the shelf as if he had intended it to remain there for as long as he was comfortable. His daughter wanted grilled cheese sandwiches every morning; he was getting better at making them. For lunch he tries to make sure she gets to eat as healthy as she can. Someone once said to him that it takes a village to raise a child and well, they weren’t wrong; the task of raising his daughter entailed a few visits from a rather energetic, but always helpful, uncle Bokuto who would take her to wherever she wanted to go while Kuroo despaired over his thesis, despaired over his job, ran his hand through his perpetually messy hair countless of times until it grew like a nest where birds could probably settle on over his head, and Bokuto, exasperated, attacks his head with a comb at the end of the day once he gets home.

 

 

 

“Don’t you have a mirror or something, Tetsurou.”

 

 

 

 

“You know, Koutarou, I don’t actually need you combing my hair.”

 

 

 

 

“Funny. The way you look these past couple of days, you’d think you were able to take care of yourself.”

 

 

 

 

Bokuto does this thing where he combs his hair wrong. He slicks the whole thing all the way back so that Kuroo looks like an irate rooster, even more so, and then calls it a job well done. And then Kuroo, without fail, runs his hand through his hair again to mess it up into something he likes better. The hair was a point of argument between the two of them, even if his daughter - now five - likes it the way it is and will put brightly-coloured clips at the edges of his hair.

 

 

 

 

“I bought her butterfly clips and owl clips,” Bokuto was saying. “And Akaashi gave her stockings with ponies on them, real cute.”

 

 

 

 

“You’re spoiling her,” Kuroo says without heat; Bokuto shrugs. He ruffles the girl’s hair and tells her he’ll come back tomorrow, and then Kuroo sends her off to her room to study.

 

 

 

Bokuto’s looking at him from the edge of the doorway. “how are you holding up?”

 

 

 

He tries to think about his mental state in the five minutes he’ll have before he needs to check on his daughter again. In that five minutes he’s presented with either _I’m working too hard again_ _or I’m fine, I just feel exhausted_ as his potential replies. He settles with, “thanks for being - her dad, while i’m not here.”

 

 

 

Bokuto raises an eyebrow. “You’re her dad.  Always.  Don’t be ridiculous.” He puts on his shoes. “Tsukki’s got free tickets to that dinosaur exhibition thing next week. I told him I’d give you some, so you can take her on Saturday, and then you guys can have dinner at my place.”

 

 

 

“Sounds good.”

 

 

 

He pulls on his tie, lets it hang listlessly over his open suit, unbuttons the first three buttons of his shirt in this heat. Bokuto catches himself staring for a while, and then turns away. “Anyway, don’t overwork yourself.”

 

 

 

“I won’t.”

 

 

 

He leaves after that. Kuroo sticks his hands into his pockets, thinks about making a pot of coffee to finish some of the reports he’s brought home with him but decides against it; he goes to her room instead, and helps her color circles and stars and birds after she writes her name.

 

 

 

**ii.**

 

“I thought you have work today.”

 

 

 

“I finished it early.”

 

 

 

Kofuku is wearing a red dress today with a black bow that Kuroo keeps fucking up, because he never really learned how to make bows properly, until Bokuto pushes him aside in exasperation and makes one perfectly on Kofuku’s back. His daughter, ever polite, thanks her uncle. Kuroo bites his lower lip, has the urge to apologize for not being able to do something so simple. Bokuto must’ve noticed the way his hands have tensed on his side and he slaps his ass.

 

 

 

“What the - ”

 

 

 

“It’s what an ace does,” he tells him. “Being able to do things so people look up to them. Something like that.”

 

 

 

_Something like that_. He holds his daughter’s hand in his own as they walk from the parking lot to the museum, his daughter skipping with her boots as they make their way while holding the tickets uncle Tsukki gave them. In another lifetime - it feels like another lifetime - Kuroo would be listening to his wife laughing right now, or he’d be turning his head to the side for a kiss; and all of those things gnaw at his bones in ways he didn’t expect, in moments he never expected to feel so raw about. Bokuto, beside him, was mostly singing along with Kofuku, but he doesn’t miss the way his eyes seem to be always watching him.

 

 

 

In the museum, Kofuku points at a large skeleton of a T-rex that spans over their heads in the room, Kuroo feeling small as he passes underneath its ribs. Once upon a time, there was a heart that beat restlessly in between those bones. Bokuto lifts Kofuku up so she can try to reach up to the spine, to the head where the skull was almost as big as their car. After a while, she gets tired of walking, and Kuroo carries her for the rest of the exhibit, a small thing with such fragile bones, and he can only hope her hands were much stronger than her father’s, who somehow was feeling a certain kind of loss as they move from fossil to fossil.

 

 

 

Kofuku has to go to the washroom at some point in their visit, and Kuroo takes that time to lean against the wall and drink a soda that Bokuto had brought for him. Bokuto clicks his tongue as he watches him pull the tab.

 

 

 

“Listen, you’re too hard on yourself and you’re making me tense!”

 

 

 

“I’m sorry,” Kuroo says simply as he drinks.

 

 

 

“Don’t,” Bokuto murmurs. He was expecting a rebuttal, but Kuroo doesn’t say anything, and like this Bokuto doesn’t exactly know how to deal with him. The distance between them was painful. Two things beside each other doesn’t mean they touch, but what’s a guy to do when space was regimented into _this_ and _that_ , what was then and what was before? He’s not sure Kuroo understands his frustrations, the way he could simply take him in his hands if he wanted to, but he also doesn’t know how best to tell him this – he’s available, he’s here, _lay it on me_. That kind of language was for a time ago.

 

 

 

Bokuto didn’t know what to do; he wanted to touch him, but even that seems to be a breach of faith.

 

 

 

Kuroo passes the silence drinking his soda.

 

 

 

 

In pompeii, Kuroo thinks, there are pictures of two lovers burnt to their deaths, preserved in stone. People side by side in their deaths, their bones laid together but barely touching. Tsukki had told him that it takes years and years to create an impression in the sand.

 

 

 

Kofuku comes back in a blur of red and pigtails. Kuroo carries her again, and Bokuto takes his can from Kuroo and finishes it for him as they move on. Bokuto’s not the most mature where it comes to these things, and it’s only now that he’s realizing he wants to do a lot more than just to be friendly. A lot of the things that he wants with regards to Kuroo are - impulsive, reckless, sheer confidence being the one thing he has in spades. Instead, he remains close and laughs with Kofuku when she tells him a joke, and even Kuroo cracks a smile as he tells her about the deep sea, things that he’s known about dinosaurs from listening to Tsukki during his late-night study session back in university, back when things were just as complicated, feelings were just as messy, and he had, for a brief moment, held Kuroo’s hand as he slept the hours.

 

 

 

A soft voice overhead tells them about giants that roamed the world, majestic creatures that swam across the sea before empires were born. The lights were dimmed, and then turned off. Pinpricks of light that served as stars shone in the dark, and Kuroo, in the span of a breath, holds his hand as they moved through the endless sea.

 

 

 

Bokuto looks at him.

 

 

 

Kuroo has a small smile on his face, and he murmurs, “it’s what a captain does. Taking care of the people he cares about, or something like that. Wouldn’t want you to drown out here.”

 

 

 

Kofuku roars, and Bokuto grins, and holds his hand, briefly, before Kuroo lets go.

 

 

 

 

 

**iii.**

 

There’s a part in the beach where the water would come only up to her ankles before the water sucks back in; that feeling of shocking cold from the sudden approach of the sea before it leaves, again, again, again. Kofuku would stand in the sand and wriggle her toes, while Kuroo rolls his pant legs over his knees as he held her hand.

 

 

 

“Careful, don’t fall in.” He keeps telling her this. At his most anxious he feels a lot more aware of his voice whenever he’s warning her to be careful. _Be careful, it’s deep. Be careful, you might get hurt._

 

 

 

“Uncle and I are building sandcastles,” she said.

 

 

 

“Good, he’s much better at it than I am.”

 

 

 

There are certain things the girl has seemed to accept by now, like how her dad was always there in the morning and the evening and uncle Koutarou fits neatly in their schedules, was always there to pick her up from school when her dad can’t, or was there to take her to places when her dad was just simply too busy to work. She remembers her mother with a slight pang but not in the way it sometimes makes it difficult for Kuroo to get out of bed in the morning, and sometimes, he envies his daughter for the way she seems to shrug off the memory in the way everything seems to return to the sea.

 

 

 

 

Uncle Koutaro was busy building sandcastles. The light from the sun reflects from his sunglasses while he makes a moat for her palace.

 

 

 

 

“Where’s the food - ?”

 

 

 

 

“Just beside the chairs.”

 

 

 

 

Neither one of them can cook well, although Kuroo’s been learning. Their lunch today was courtesy of a helpful Akaashi and Tsukishima, both of whom were perpetually worried about the way they conduct their lives with each other, dancing around unanswered questions and half-meant gestures. When his wife was alive she liked to make them rice balls and curry and sweets for Kofuku. He can’t copy the taste whenever he cooks or bakes anymore, but Bokuto tells him the food he makes is good anyway. He’ll eat it even if it looks like shit. Back in his university days his wife had always praised Bokuto’s stomach, which seemed to be made of steel. _That was just Bokuto_ , Kuroo thinks as he eats his lunch. Bokuto who was just wanted everyone to be happy even if some days, it’s difficult to muster the requisite amount of happiness he thinks will please him. A lot of people talk about Bokuto’s moods and how difficult it must be to deal with it, but in Kuroo’s opinion those people haven’t had the chance to deal with him instead.

 

 

 

In the torrid sun, Bokuto lay under an umbrella while Kofuku put liberal amounts of sunblock before she went out of the shade to build sandcastles again.

 

 

 

“Don’t go too far,” Kuroo tells her.

 

 

 

He sits beside Bokuto’s chair. Bokuto crosses his feet around his ankles. A finger traces the line on the hem of his pants where the sun had tanned his skin, and Kuroo shivers underneath his touch; he withdraws his hand, and Bokuto turns on his side to tune the radio. “Remember when we had a training camp somewhere near the sea?” He asked, grinning.

 

 

 

“What about it?”

 

 

 

“I had a heatstroke ….”

 

 

 

“You were way too excited about the barbeque and swimming.”

 

 

 

 

“I can’t help it if I like meat!”

 

 

 

 

Kuroo shakes his head. And then, in a quiet voice, he tells him, “she loved the sea, too.”

 

 

 

“I know. You tell me all the time.”

 

 

 

 

“Our honeymoon in hawaii, all we ever did was walk along the beach. It’s stupidly clichéd, but … it felt good to do that, especially if you catch the sun just starting to come up in the horizon. The afterglow ….” Kuroo paused, lost in thought. “It looked out of this world.”

 

 

 

 

And now he was here, watching his daughter carry a tiny pail full of water to her sand castle. Bokuto watches him, his gaze unreadable behind his glasses. Kuroo stands up, dusts off the sand from his shorts as he makes his way to Kofuku to help.

 

 

 

He gets into this mood, Bokuto thinks, where he’s quiet and pensive and not quite at the point of hurting but way past it, which is not exactly happiness but isn’t exactly contentment either. Just a sense of resignation where he’d done all that he can at that time, at the point of memory, and now that Kuroo remembers he is overwhelmed with nostalgia, moving through his gestures as if, a lifetime ago, he had done all the same things. Sometimes Bokuto wants to hold him and just tell him to rest, to stop thinking about anything - anyone - but he’s not so cruel to say it to him. Not so cruel to usurp her place. Though, _god_ , does he want so badly to do nothing but bury his face on the ridge of his spine, to reach out and feel a beating heart, the way they had looked upon fossils weeks ago and in a fit of mercy, or compassion, he still can’t tell which, they decided to hold hands. It’s not the first time he’s held his hands, he’s held hands with Kuroo too many times to count. But in that quiet moment – when he was looking at him – and underneath all the stars ….

 

The memory burns in his palm.

 

 

 

He had not grown up with Kuroo the way Kenma had, but he felt that he had known him long enough to be feeling entitled of his attention, and now that he has found himself in his orbit Bokuto finds himself not quite happy with the results. It’s not that she wasn’t a good woman, it’s just that he doesn’t feel like _he’s_ good enough - for the moment - and the relentless way that Kuroo can be too hard on himself is also making Bokuto tense, is adding to the pressure he has on himself, the way he constantly needs to look and act like he had the answers, that he will make everything alright, if he’d let him. The problem is that he always does, the problem is that he always needs him, and Bokuto turns to him the way the sea turns to the moon, the edge of the world; the way the skies reflect the sun; the way the land kisses the foam of the tides.

 

 

 

 

**iv.**

 

Kofuku sleeps in her dad’s jacket that she’s worn for the evening, and had never let go of. Kuroo’s daughter has worn it a lot more than he does ever since she was born; it’s frayed at the edges and its brilliant shade has now faded away, and there are probably holes on the side that he’s forgotten to mend, but he’s grown so comfortable with it that he refuses to throw it out. He lights up a cigarette on the table as he and Bokuto play cards to pass the time; Bokuto has a beer for them both and pours it on a glass for Kuroo, then for him.

 

 

 

 

“She grew taller this year,” Kuroo was saying. “In a year and a half she’ll be taller than any of her classmates.”

 

 

 

 

“God, I’m scared. Tsukki’s kid is like that, too.”

 

 

 

“Tsukki’s  kid is probably going to be terrifying.”

 

 

 

 

“Speak for yourself!”

 

 

 

 

They play a few rounds; Bokuto loses only twice and gets worked up when Kuroo teases him about it, which of course means that he wins the rest of the round because he hates losing to Kuroo, of all people. Kuroo runs his hand through his hair. He’s wearing the black Nekoma shirt, even now, and Bokuto frowns. “I can’t believe that still fits you.”

 

 

 

 

Kuroo is quiet. And then, rather evasively, he tells him, “I’ve lost a bit of weight.”

 

 

 

 

Neither of them talk for a while, and Bokuto’s silence is more accusing than Kuroo’s. Funny how the guy who couldn’t shut up in high school was the only one who could make him feel terrible in silence, other than Kenma, who has put up with him far longer than Bokuto but is no less forgiving. He wants to be outraged at this kind of attention; wants to call him out and tell him it’s unwarranted, but it’s not exactly unpleasant, and really, if he’s being honest with himself: he is enjoying it, coming from Bokuto. Even if it means, rather unfortunately, having to swallow his pride.

 

 

 

Bokuto folds his cards. “I don’t like this thing that you’re doing.”

 

 

 

 

“I’m more careful now,” Kuroo says in protest. “I’ve been eating more, sleeping more. Ask her. She keeps an eye on me too.”

 

 

 

… which meant, to Bokuto, that she has probably seen her father in worse times. The point was that she shouldn’t have to, the point was that he didn’t have to do it alone, the point was that he was an option he’d like to be considered in the long run. Grief does a lot of things to people, and people react to it differently; he understands this. Bokuto purses his lips, drinks his glass empty. He’s irritated at Kuroo’s constant posturing, evading, and Kuroo is only so happy to keep it up even if he finds little cracks in his armor that threaten him to be a bit more honest, a bit more forthcoming about his misery. What Kuroo wants, above everything else, is to fall apart in the safety of somebody’s arms without having to feel the slightest bit of guilt in the process. He wants to be able to forgive himself.

 

 

 

Bokuto takes his cigarette. Smokes it for him, his eyes never leaving his own as he looks at him. Mouth breathing that smoke as he glances at him before giving it back, his fingers gentle as he puts the filter in between his own.

 

 

 

 

“I’ll kick your ass if you make her cry.”

 

 

 

 

“… you’re gonna be kicking my ass for a long while. I’m pretty sure you’ve been doing that since we were kids – ”

 

 

 

“I don’t care!” Bokuto says, upset, and then - mindful of the way Kuroo’s eyes narrowed at his loud tone - “I don’t care,” he repeats, a bit quieter now but more miserable. “ _I like_ \- I care - !!”

 

 

 

“ _Bokuto_.”

 

 

 

“- why can’t I say it?” he looks at him, his voice challenging. He leans forward on the table as if to strike and Kuroo leans back, his hands on the edge, fingers drumming on the surface, ready to lash out but restrained, polite even in his frustrations. Quiet in his anger. “I want to say it to you. _I’ve been saying it to you all this time_. So why can’t I say it?”

 

 

 

( There is a question he wants to ask, the one that makes him choke even to just think of it, and it’s resting uncomfortably on the tip of his tongue. It will do them no good if the question was said out loud, but Bokuto resists being petty. )

 

 

 

Kuroo looks away.

 

 

 

He expects a strike. Bokuto expects an attack, something hurtful, something that would cause him to reach over and punch his face, but instead, what comes out of his mouth is:

 

 

 

“I can’t stop you even if you wanted to. I never have. But you’re better off wanting - someone else.”

 

 

 

He stands up. “I’m going to bed.”

 

 

“You’re a coward,” Bokuto growls. “You call that an argument? You used to be a lot better. You’re a coward, and I love you, and I’m going to keep working hard until you realize that it’s always been you all this time.”

 

 

 

Kuroo flinches, as if he were slapped, but he walks ahead, head held high, and Bokuto, pissed, drinks both their beer and leaves the cards on the table in disarray as he makes his way to his room, fists clenched, heart threatening to spill onto his sleeves. There was the quiet sound of a door latching shut, and then: a sigh as a body presses against a wooden door. A quiet, apologetic knock.  A mouth full of names that the sound of the sea swallows in its wake: only one name, an apology, a heated rebuke. And then: silence. Everything tastes like the sea, Bokuto thinks. His skin, his mouth, his tears.

 

 

 

 

**v.**

 

He comes back to him in fall. Or: he steps into his apartment, for the first time since their argument, though he hasn’t stopped Bokuto from visiting them, if only for his daughter’s sake, even if their gestures and words were short and cold. He had moved around him in a constant fear of being burnt by the way he felt his desire, a wild animal with too-sharp teeth, old and waiting to taste blood ever since the first time he’d met him in a training camp, a lifetime ago, when he was nothing but a boy and Bokuto’s laughter meant something else. Bokuto’s walls were white, clinically so, though his furniture were a light shade of maple and his couches a gunmetal grey. His cushions and linens were gold, or a soft yellow, or cream. Kuroo’s jacket was a stark contrast, a violent break of bright red against his muted colours. There was a slight breeze blowing through the cream-coloured curtains. Kuroo watches the city through his windows as he makes coffee for him in his perpetually chaotic kitchen.

 

 

 

“Kofuku’s not with you?”

 

 

 

“Tsukki took her to this research facility he moved in. Apparently they’ve got giant tanks of … something, I forgot what, but he got Kofuku all excited.”

 

 

 

“The hell are they doing there? Recreating _Jurassic Park_?”

 

 

 

“Knowing Tsukki, probably.”

 

 

 

Bokuto comes over his side, holding two steaming mugs. He leans against the window sill as he drinks his coffee, and Kuroo cradles his hands around it, letting the wind blow over the surface as a comfortable silence settles between them. He thinks that Kofuku will need new coats now, her winter coats are a bit short on the sleeves and winter will be coming soon. He needs to buy hot chocolate. He needs to start calling her sensei about that ice-skating class she wants to be in. It seems like whenever he’s with Bokuto he always has to think about all the things that he needs to do, and he doesn’t really understand why it is that he always wants to be - _better_ , somehow, whenever he’s around, but he has a few guesses. None of them surprising.

 

 

 

“I’m sorry,” he tells him.

 

 

“What for?”

 

 

 

“Disappointing you. Back when we were at the beach.”

 

 

 

“Oh,” Bokuto says.

 

 

 

He feels like Tsukishima, Kuroo thinks, the way his fingers were tense around the edge of the mug, the way he’s got his eyes on the ground inspecting the hardwood floors of Bokuto’s apartment. He can feel his presence beside him, his shoulders warm on the side of his arm. Bokuto sighs. He thinks that he’s about to launch into a lecture, or he’s about to come out with a laundry list of his problems - “yes, Kuroo Tetsurouu, you’re problematic,” or something along those lines - except that Bokuto does nothing of the sort, and leans his head against his shoulder instead.

 

 

 

“I get it, you know, it still hurts for you,” he murmurs. “But … ”

 

 

 

“No, I - ”

 

 

 

“ _Shut up_. God.”

 

 

 

“Okay,” Kuroo says. He starts to laugh. He puts his arm around Bokuto’s shoulder and pulls him closer to him, around his chest, where slowly but surely, he can feel a heart beating again. “There. Is that better?”

 

 

 

“It’s a start,” Bokuto says, rolling his eyes. and still: he puts his mug aside, and he tiptoes up - it’s sad that he has to tiptoe now given Kuroo’s height, but what can he do - and he kisses him.

 

 

 

 

Kuroo closes his eyes.

 

 

 

Winter will come soon, he thinks. Winter will come and this time, they can meet it together and it will be the warmest he’s ever been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

end.

 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at [fealle](http://fealle.tumblr.com/tagged/My-fic) for other fics.


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